iting for you. And, Gail, there's going to be the most
thoroughly scared gang at the UN and elsewhere that you ever saw, now
that what they think's a space-fleet is actually here! We've been decent
to the kids, and they think they haven't, so we'll hold out for
authority to argue...."

* * * * *

A door slammed. Fran said happily:

"Let's go!"

Motors boomed. The helicopter lifted. It rushed over the village,
bellowing. Tree-branches thrashed violently in the down draught. It
swept splendidly away down a valley leading to another valley and under
a precipitous cliff and down more valleys. There was a place where eight
silvery spacecraft floated composedly above the Earth, with the few
survivors of a great civilization peering out, waiting for dawn so they
could see a new world, a fresh world healed of all scars, waiting....

Soames pulled Gail to him. "I've got to make friends with these people,
Gail!" His voice trembled with excitement. "You see? They've got a
wonderful science, but we've got to get to work on it! They need a
modern viewpoint! That time-transposing system they've used to save
their lives, it's bound to work as a space-transposer too! I've got to
work it out with their engineers! We've got to get enough power together
to send some sort of miniature transposer out to Centaurus and
Aldebaran, and then have regular interstellar transposition routes and a
spate of worlds for everybody to move to who feels like it.... Taking
what these people have, and adding our stuff to it ... we'll really go
places!"

They swept over the reflecting waters which were the reservoir behind
the Polder Dam. Fran spoke aloud, for someone somewhere else to hear. He
spoke again. He was using his own, home-made sensory communicator. Then
he suddenly touched Soames' arm.

"My people say--" pause "you talk for them." He grinned. "Let's go!"

And the 'copter touched solidity and a great silvery cylinder touched
very delicately close by, and the children ran, squealing, to be with
people they'd feared they would never see again. And Soames and Gail
walked a little bit diffidently toward the same opened, lowered door.
There were some rather nice people waiting for them. They'd raised fine
children. They needed Soames and Gail to help them make friends.

Somehow it did not occur to Soames that he was the occasion, if not the
cause, that on this one day and within hours, the danger of atomic war